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Editing competition

└ posted on Monday, 31 January 2011, by Novil

I received more than 30 applications for the two editor positions for Sandra and Woo and Gaia. It was a tough decision between many equally qualified candidates, but I eventually made up my mind and contacted two of them today.

Since there was so much interest in editing Sandra and Woo (and Gaia) I want to hold a little editing competition in which you have the chance to win some prize money by suggesting corrections to the dialog used in our Sandra and Woo strips. The competition works like this:

The goal of the competition is to find grammar mistakes and alternative phrases which sound better than the ones currently used in the already published Sandra and Woo strips.

Only corrections mailed to novil@gmx.de with the title “Editing competition” will be considered. I will check my spam folder regularly so you don’t have to be afraid that your mail got lost.

The competition will be split into five parts consisting of 50 strips, each lasting one week. Only corrections related to those strips will be considered in the given time frame:

You will get $3 $2 for every reported mistake and $1 for every minor correction which I will eventually use. If two competitors suggest the same correction, the first competitor will get the money, unless the second competitor provides a significantly better explanation why his version of the phrase is better than the one currently used in the strip AND I need this explanation to understand the problem.

The competitor with the most acknowledged corrections in one part will receive $5 extra.

The competitor with the most acknowledged corrections overall will receive $10 extra.

If there are several competitors who found the same amount of mistakes, the winner of the bonus will be selected among them by chance.

An example: If you should report 10 mistakes and 5 minor corrections, winning two parts and the overall ranking, you will receive $2 x 10 + $1 x 5 + $5 x 2 + $10 = $45 in the end.

I will pay with Paypal after the end of the competition. I will consider alternative payment methods for winners without a Paypal account who won $10 or more.

All competitors with an acknowledged correction will be thanked for in a news post on our main page. So don’t forget to include a link to your homepage in your comment if you have one.

The first part of the competition starts now!

Update (31 January 2011): I have already received so many corrections (much more than I hoped for) that I’m now in a difficult situation. If I accepted all the suggestions which are just “nice to have” instead of correcting actual mistakes, the competition would become too expensive for me. Therefore I want to reduce the prize money to $2 for corrections of actual mistakes, and to $1 for minor improvements of the text flow. I hope that everybody is okay with that.

I have already received so many corrections (much more than I hoped for) that I’m now in a difficult situation. If I accepted all the suggestions which are just “nice to have” instead of correcting actual mistakes, the competition would become too expensive for me. Therefore I want to reduce the prize money to $2 for corrections of actual mistakes, and to $1 for minor improvements of the text flow. I hope that everybody is okay with that.

So you had no idea that there were so many improvements possible.
Do we ever get to see the corrected strips? Just doing the corrections could take a while.
It looks like over half the strips.
I do have a good sense of English, but I’m not editor class in that, which is why I did not apply.
I may need to get up to that skill level.

There is a difference between spoken English and written, with again some exceptions like Twain.
If all your corrections correct to spoken English, check if you should be doing them, as you are the one ultimately responsible for the strip.

Hey- this is probably outdated, the transcription under the comic of “Hazel On The Run II (Fox News)”, the caption says “NEXT: HUNTERS, A THREAT TO NATIONAL SECURITY!?” and the transcription says “NEWS: HUNTERS, A THREAT TO NATIONAL SECURITY!?”. I am just pointing this out.